Consider the beautiful but cryptic statements of John 1:1:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

God's love has always been and will always be infinite and perfect. That means the expression of God's love -- His truth -- has also always been and will always be infinite and perfect.

The Lord has shared this truth with us in various ways since the beginning of humanity. The earliest people received truth directly, flowing into the inner parts of their minds from heaven. Later, people understood it through nature seeing the Lord's love expressed in mountains, trees, rivers, and the sun, moon and stars. By using natural language as a container for spiritual language, the Lord expressed truth within the Bible inside its stories, laws and prophecies. When humanity reached its lowest point, God took on a human form and walked among us as Jesus. In this way, the Lord brought us Divine truths in an accessible and tangible way. By accepting and loving the Lord as Jesus we can open ourselves to His love.

Finally, the Heavenly Doctrine received through the pen of Emanuel Swedenborg are themselves a container for Divine Truth, both in speaking plainly about heaven and by unlocking the truth as it is contained in the Bible.

The Word itself is Divine Truth; the Lord's expression of love has and never will change.

330. Children who die are still children in the other life. They have the same kind of childlike mind, the same innocence in their ignorance, the same total delicateness - they are only in the rudiments of becoming angels; for children are not angels in being but only angels in becoming. Actually everyone who leaves this world stays in the same state of life - a baby is in the state of a baby, a child in the state of a child, an adolescent or adult or senior in the state of an adolescent, an adult, or a senior. However, this state eventually changes. A child's state is better than the others, though, in regard to innocence, and in regard to the fact that children have not yet let evils take root in them by actually living them. The quality of innocence is such that everything heavenly can be sown in it, because innocence is the vessel of the truths of faith and the good affections of love.